Regex to get text from html tags (nested) - Java

Question

Using regex, I want to be able to get the text between multiple html tags. Here HTML is just for representation of input, I am not worried about HTML tags, just want to retrieve the content in the HTML tags(between both correct open and close tags). For instance, the following:

Required Input:

<h1>Text 1</h1>
<h1><h2>Text 2</h2></h1>
<h1><h2>Text 3</h2>Xtra</h1>
<h1>Text 4<h1>extra</h1515></h1>
<h1><h1></h1></h1>

Required Output:

Text 1
Text 2
Text 3
None
None

Output Obtained:

Text 1
Text 2
Text 3
Text 4<h1>extra</h1515>
<h1></h1>

Regex I tried:

"<([\\S ]+)>([\\S ]+)</\\1>"

I am not getting the expected result.

My java code:

import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;
import java.text.*;
import java.math.*;
import java.util.regex.*;

public class Solution{
   public static void main(String[] args){

      Scanner in = new Scanner(System.in);
      int testCases = Integer.parseInt(in.nextLine());
      while(testCases>0){
         String line = in.nextLine();
         String tmp = line;
          Pattern r = Pattern.compile("<([\\S ]+)>([\\S ]+)</\\1>", Pattern.MULTILINE);
         Matcher m = r.matcher(line);
         while(m.find()){
             line = line.replaceAll(line, m.group(2));
             m = r.matcher(line);
         }
         if(line != tmp)
             System.out.println(line);
          else
              System.out.println("None");
         testCases--;
      }
   }
}

Mandatory info: Can you provide some examples of why it is hard to parse XML and HTML with a regex?. Have you tried using parser? — Pshemo
– Pshemo, Commented Jan 2, 2016 at 23:29
Welcome to the real world. HTML is not a regular language, you cannot expect to parse it using regular expressions. — DwB
– DwB, Commented Jan 3, 2016 at 20:19

norlesh · Accepted Answer · 2016-01-02 23:38:42Z

2

As pointed out in the comments that way lies nothing but pain. For what your attempting to do you would be far better off walking the DOM (Document Object Model) with something like jsoup

answered Jan 2, 2016 at 23:38

norlesh

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